Tuesday, August 21, 2007

working in a new language is always fun; even doubly so, if it is in a certain language called erlang ;) ... what sucks though, is setting up new IDEs and dev environments; over the last week, or so, I have used and thrown out:

erlybird -- because it is pre-alpha; slow as a dog; and shows errors for perfectly accurate erlang code (in the rabbitmq codebase I am currently working on) ... but like I said, it is pre-alpha, so those things are to be expectederlide -- because I have had it kill-dash-nining eclipse, for every code compile

beautiful thing about erlang is, programs written in the language are naturally concise, and so you can get by without the need for an IDE; which is quite a mindset change for me--don't get me wrong; I'll use an IDE if there was a good one out there; but I don't need it, like I do when I switch back to working on the Java/Flex bits of the stuff I work on.

anyway, jedit has good syntax highlighting support for erlang; and good macro, regex, and scripting (BeanShell) support, so you can customize to fit stuff not supported ootb

Update(3 Sept)FIXED!

Update(22 Aug)one thing I failed to mention is that erlide has a really good code outline feature, that shines when you have code that has a lot of pattern matching going on. Plus it is actually quite snappy for 'normal' usage; so I investigated the problem a bit; as it turns out, I had modules with identical names, in different projects and Vlad confirmed over email that it is actually a bug, which is why eclipse was hanging. Bug filed here.

Add eclipse monkey to this, and erlide is a pretty kewl erlang tool, afterall (after the bugfix, of course) :)

currently in dc, and the onair bus tour made a pit stop in falls church yesterday, so I popped out there (with Gyfted) to hang out, get some free food (awesome meatballs), while we got some work done in the lobby

presentations were on the general air feature list, db & dataservices, integration with html/ajax, and a display of pretty cool stuff guys are building